The sobbing didn’t pass, but I did find myself in the mood to dig my axe into an evil monster. I needed glass. Desperately. I could not let those two greenhouses get completely destroyed. Both requested 0/9 glass.

  I crossed the bridge, glaring at the spider bush monster as I held out my axe. I tried not to scream but instead poured all my anger and frustration into the axe as I hacked away at that thing. It tried to get me, but I didn’t let it. I just slammed it into the ground. I would have beaten it to a pulp, but another monster rolled out of the bushes before scuttling toward me. Fine. I was still angry. That one I did beat to a pulp.

  I stood there, gasping for air, a fresh set of tears falling down my cheeks. I didn’t bother drying them as I gathered sand into bags. I went through the motion of filling them, filling up my inventory, then crossing the bridge to drop them off at the other side. It was nice I had an inventory now, with each bag of sand filling up a slot. This method was a thousand times easier than crossing the bridge with two bags of sand at a time.

  I was surprised at the change in me. A spider monster rolling out of the foliage didn’t make me shiver. Instead, I lifted my axe and swung, chopping it in half and making sure it was completely dead before picking up more sand.

  I needed twenty bags of sand. I got to fourteen when I just needed to leave. There were too many spider monsters that kept me from my goal. I about left when a demon monkey dropped from the trees, shrieking as it clawed my shoulder. I gasped in surprise, almost dropping a bag of sand. My grip tightened over the bag and I started running to the bridge. My health points dropped to seventy-five percent, and I wasn’t interested in getting hurt again.

  Once I crossed the bridge and gave the mental choice to move to the wolf’s side, I took a moment to inspect my wound. It wasn’t too deep, but it was a wound. I watched, surprised, as the wound on my skin stitched back up.

  Article of building clothing ruined. Must be fixed before it can be used.

  I let out an annoyed sigh, then glanced at the demon monkey on the other side of the bridge. Maybe demon monkey was the wrong word. It looked a bit more like a zombie monkey, with glowing red eyes. It was dripping with something dark, and I wasn’t interested in staying to see what it was.

  Instead, I gathered everything I could, which turned out to be everything in my inventory and three whole bags of sand and headed back toward the house. The tool was currently making stone blocks, but by tonight I would have enough to put five bags of sand in there. The wolf, again, had a long timer, so it wouldn’t be back for a while, which meant I had time. Time I would use.

  I placed my torn vest once again on the sewing machine before glancing at the wound on my shoulder. It was gone. There was a faint scar there, and I had the impression that if I crossed the bridge again today, it would reopen.

  I sighed, then dropped the rest of the sand in the storage unit and went back to cleaning the back yard. Despite only having two articles of building clothes on, I could still see what needed to be done. It took a long time to get the back yard looking how it did before. So long that I switched out the broken stone and placed more broken stone in the tool to make more blocks. It was mostly a matter of putting all the displaced boards into the fence to rebuild that. I put in the logs, then the boards. It asked for 0/15 bricks, which I couldn’t fulfill at the moment.

  It still hurt, losing all those resources. I realized I didn’t actually know what the punishment would be if they broke through the fence because it hadn’t happened before. This was a doozy, though, and it reinforced my desire to keep my priority on the fence.

  I started another fire and cooked every last thing I had. By the end of one hour, I had a meager collection of two tomato soups, one potato soup, a fish and chips, and three fried fish. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something. Those greenhouses needed to be built, and I would get my food back.

  All the other resources I placed into the storage unit. By the end of the night, I had the backyard cleaned. I cut down a few trees to finish up the board portion of the storage unit. I even dropped some down the dumpster to bring my points back up. It was only after checking my progress that I got enough points to buy both the fourth article of clothing for the logging and the building. It left me with a total of 6.62 total dopamine points.

  I got on my entire outfit for logging with the newly purchased sturdy jeans and was told seven logs were now the basic drop. I went upstairs to get the newly repaired reflective vest to put on all four articles of building clothes.

  Ability unlocked: Traps

  Something was unlocked on the clipboard. I left the sturdy jeans of the building clothes to be buffed during the night as I went to see what kind of traps I could get. I hoped there was a wolf trap. That would be nice.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  I flipped through the pages until I got to the one labeled traps. There were pictures of what looked like a clawed hunting trap. Others were boxes. There were eight different kinds of various sizes.

  Deer Trap -20.00

  -gives three meat (venison)

  Pig Trap -20.00

  -gives three meat (pork)

  Chicken Trap -20.00

  -gives three meat (chicken)

  Chicken Trap (Box) -20.00

  -traps one chicken in (1) day(s)

  -must have level two animal care to catch one

  Cow Trap -20.00

  -gives three meat (beef)

  Cow Trap (Box) -20.00

  -traps one cow in (3) day(s)

  -must have level three animal care to catch one

  Sheep Trap -20.00

  -gives three meat (mutton)

  Sheep Trap (Box) -20.00

  -traps one sheep in (???) days

  -must have level four animal care to catch one

  I wasn’t sure how many days it would take to catch a sheep, but it was nice to have a way to not spend my dopamine points getting the animal. I would probably not know until I got my level four clothing item in animal care.

  You are not vegetarian?

  I glanced at the phrase that appeared in my vision. “I’m… not. But… don’t you already know this?”

  Your outburst today about Daisy.

  We are not sure if this triggered a need to be vegetarian.

  Humans react differently to something like that, and we wanted to check.

  I sighed, glancing at the list of traps again. “No. I still eat meat. I just… not Daisy. Daisy needs to stay alive.”

  Did that make me a hypocrite? I honestly didn’t care. I was too exhausted.

  Very well. We shall continue with the new menu items.

  Right as the words disappeared from my vision, I felt a few more recipes unlock. I flipped to the other pages. There were still a lot grayed out, but I saw a meatloaf and mashed potato recipe. Also a steak recipe, a meatball recipe, a roast and veggies recipe, and a hearty stew recipe. Each had the option to use whatever meat I wanted in there. There were some pork chops, and a bacon, sausage, and scrambled egg breakfast platter. In the comfort foods I saw chicken wings and chicken strips with fries. I just unlocked a lot of food options, and I still hadn’t caught any animals.

  That practically doubled my comfort food options. It also gave me a lot more options for regular food, and hopefully with the higher level, they gave me more stamina. This was part of foraging, so it would also help raise my cooking levels as I did this. I’d just have to build the traps.

  They were a bit pricy, though. But once I bought one, it would be reusable, so it was like an investment.

  Setting the traps in the foraging area, though, meant the meat would be sitting there in wolf territory. Would the wolf eat the meat?

  If you haven’t gathered meat in one day, the wolf will take it

  “Alright, fair enough,” I said.

  I started to hear whispers and flinched, remembering I was at twenty-five percent sanity. I really couldn’t trust myself to stay inside for long, because I didn’t want to lose any more sanity.

  Since this was the day after their attack, the wolf was gone for a lot longer than normal. So I went back outside to gather a lot more clay. Tomorrow I needed to make bricks. Between the brick request for the fence and the storage unit, I wanted to make as many bricks as I could tomorrow morning. Gathering thirteen mounds of clay every trip to the river definitely felt amazing. I would even use the furnace to bake it. These next few days were a mission of restocking and rebuilding.

  I probably should have been cleaning, but I didn’t want to chance it with twenty-five percent sanity. There was way too much to do. Once I got a lot of clay, I still had a half an hour before the wolf came. I walked carefully over to the other side of the house toward the barn. That needed a lot of logs. Now that I was dropping seven, sometimes eight, it shouldn’t take as long. The main reason why I was so afraid, though, was because I needed to pass by the other side of the house to get to the barn. More specifically, if I turned my head in a certain direction, I could see if there was another beer can under my bedroom window.

  I fought that desire hard. I had twenty-five percent of my sanity, and I wanted to keep it. Part of me didn’t want to see the beer cans and the cigarette butts, but another part of me needed to acknowledge it.

  They couldn’t be Theo’s. Theo was not that kind of person, and he wouldn’t have looked so shocked and surprised at my existence if he’d been coming over to this side of the river just to look at me sleeping. No. No way. Definitely not Theo.

  Which meant it was someone else. Someone else peeking through my window while I slept. Leaving garbage on the ground for me to acknowledge they were here.

  I couldn’t do it. I covered part of my eyes so I didn’t have to see those beer cans. It might come back to haunt me, but for right now, I just needed to spend the next twenty minutes cutting down trees.

  About twelve logs had been lifted out of the barn and scattered across the way. I used all of them to rebuild the fences. The inventory was a huge boost to my productivity, and it was nice to drop eleven logs at a time while standing at the base of the barn. I was close to a hundred by the time I wanted to be done pushing my luck. I brushed off my hands, looking at the cleared space of trees. The barn was close enough to the greenhouses that it would either share with that fence or I’d have to build a third fence to keep it protected.

  I started heading back when my foot kicked something. Everything inside me froze, because I was quite sure the thing I kicked was a beer can. Instinctively I turned around, but I kept my gaze from dropping to the ground. For one instant I was certain there was a hooded figure not that far from me, but when I blinked it was just a tree. At least, I was pretty sure it was just a tree.

  As my sanity shivered, I turned around and sprinted back into the house, a good seven minutes before the wolf was to arrive. I locked both doors, then headed straight for my bedroom, Killie following behind me.

  I was done for today.